And of course, as my interaction with the Reeds demonstrated, we physicians all too easily forget that many of our patients come from different backgrounds than we do, backgrounds that shape the way they view the world and the way they interpret their medical encounters.

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"NASA has used many robots for doing different tasks but there are so many things, so the idea was to build one that can change shape and size depending on what NASA wants it to do, " said Shen.

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